TELL ME LOSING EVERYTHING IS WHAT SAVED YOU, TELL ME YOU FINALLY TASTE FREEDOM. DON’T LIE. I SEE IT IN YOUR EYES. WOMEN DO NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEIR OWN VOICES AND RESORT TO THINGS DEEPER; DON’T LIE TO ME. TELL ME YOU LOVED TO DESTROY. TELL ME YOU NEED ME, PLEASE. YOU ARE THE BONES OF MY SPINE. YOU ARE THE GROUND BENEATH MY FEET. YOU ARE MADE OF DEEPER STUFF THAN EARTH CAN GIVE.
I spend my days reading about Greek heroes.
I study their tragedies. Icarus and his fall, Hercules as a widower, the Trojan Prince Hektor and his gruesome death, Jason and Medea, Perseus, Theseus, Orestes, Odysseus. Achilles.
For some reason, my interest does not hold on their legends. No, I think of Penelope. I find stories of Penelope; how she tricked suitors for years to keep them at bay until, at long last, Odysseus returned home. She waited all that time and I wonder why; it is a question there is no ration for. I love the quiet questioning; the way it fills me with a purpose, an incessant why, why, why? It is the first time for a very long time I have felt such direction and I read, into all hours of the day, with the weak autumn light filtering through the red-orange-gold leaves. They soften my footfalls as I pass from aisle to aisle, searching for an answer.
Why did she love him so?
I keep seeing a girl; dark, intense, as if sketched out of coal and coloured in with red-brown clay. The colour of the earth when it is opened up like a wound. I go hours without seeing her at times, and something almost possess me to ask her when I do, Do you know why Penelope waited for him to come home? I am wandering toward where I begun in my search to answer the question, drifting as the leaves do from the canopy above... it is dark, and I am growing tired.
But the next time I come across her she is on the dirt floor. I start, trotting in her direction. It is not something uncommon, to discover patrons napping between the aisles of books and beneath the autumn leaves. But something about this appears haphazard; it is not a typical alcove to find someone napping, and besides, there is no warmth left from the day. The chill of dusk is settling, rapidly, in. The nearer I become, the more familiar she appears; it must be because I have seen her in the Court, or even the library, in the past. It is an unsettling feeling, especially in the dim lantern-lit aisle. The wind is whispering, rustling, through the corridor; that, too, sounds old and familiar. “Hello?” I ask, quietly. My voice cracks from disuse, and I flush with embarrassment. “Excuse me, miss… are you alright?"
I never notice that I am standing in a row of books labeled Greek Tragedies.
ADMIT IT; YOU ARE LOST WITHOUT THE WAITING. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE YOURSELF IN PARADISE? EVEN THE DAUGHTER OF GODS MUST KNOW LONELINESS, MUST SOMETIMES WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE TRAPPED IN A HELL OF FOREVERS. THANK ME, YOU QUEEN. I’VE GIVEN YOU FOREVER.
